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The Projects of Life Reflected in Autobiographies of Old Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2018

Jan-Erik Ruth ,
James E. Birren  and
Donald E. Polkinghorne
Jan-Erik Ruth
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy, 00014University of Helsinki, Finland
James E. Birren
Affiliation:
UCLA Center on Aging, 10945 Le Conte Avenue, Box 956980, Los Angeles, CA 90095-6980, U.S.A.
Donald E. Polkinghorne
Affiliation:
Division of Counseling Psychology, University of Southern California, WPH 500, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0031, U.S.A.
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Abstract

The present investigation was based on the analysis of twenty respondents, ten men and ten women, all retired. The written texts were obtained from the archives of one of the authors who gathered autobiographies using a guided method of assigned topics of life. The main objective for this analysis was to find those central life goals and dominant activities around which the projects of life were formed. Sorting of life projects was done according to the constant comparison method described by Glaser and Strauss in their Grounded Theory model. Five types of life projects were identified in the narratives: living is achieving, living is being social, living is loving, living is family life, living is struggling. Considerable gender differences appeared in the findings with women showing a broader participation and interpretation of life where family life, community work and job careers were important. The men tended to be more monothematic focusing either on a personal achievement or a career development in a more social context. The rhetoric in the discourse of life themes was quite different between the sexes reflecting the sex role scripts of the cohort studied. Only in some of the types was the class dimension clearly visible where the type living is achieving and to a certain extent even living is being social reflected upper middle class and upper class occupations while living is loving reflected middle class occupations. The positive narrative tone and the telling of well-managed life projects and success stories in most of the accounts were considered as American features in comparison to some Finnish life stories that contained more of the telling of hardships. The most gender bound accounts such as the masculine living is achieving and the feminine living is loving life projects showed the greatest resemblances between these two western cultures revealing comparable master scripts.

Keywords

Life projectslife storiesautobiographynarrative gerontologygrounded theorygender differencescultural comparisons
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 16 , Issue 6: Special Issue: Ageing, Biography and Practice , November 1996 , pp. 677 - 699
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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